I see in other threads people are still worried about inflation. Not me!

I again do hope we stay above 4% inflation for years as a partial debt jubilee.

But BBB failed and the GOP had a 90% chance of taking the house.

The days of showering the working and middle class with CovidBux is over.

Just one example, the $300 per child per month tax credit expired this month. For a family of 5 with a median US income of about 50K, that’s a sudden drop in after tax/after rent/mortgage income of about 25%!

Total covid transfer payments were about $5 trillion. Probably 80% of that was spent on goods and services at a time when supply was flat or declining! Kevin Drum has usefully noted that it appears that when the spigot was really gushing with PPP/stim payments/extended unemployment, and a lot was shut down, the funds were heavily saved even by cash constrained households who normally spend all extra funds.

These households however have been gradually spending down excess savings and are now back to normal levels.

In summary, consumer powered demand inflation will disappear. Meanwhile supply shortages that are heavily caused by labor shortages will decline as covid subsides and people return to work. Biden is also relaxing Trump’s immigration controls.

Dude. Stick with real estate

My ability to buy real estate was in large part because I shorted bank stocks in 2006-2007 instead of buying RE like most young professionals my age were doing.

Individual stocks aren’t your thing

I purchased XOM on 1/21/22 for 72.13 and am up 13% since then, plus a 1% quarterly dividend.

I like GOOG, which has done very well this week.

I have some business income coming in. I am putting the largest amount of it into tax free munis. EVM pays 4.4% free of state and federal tax.

The second largest use are value stocks, XOM, SU, T, TD, BNS and VZ. They are all around p/e of 10 and pretty solid companies.

The third largest use are shorting tech stocks that lose tons and tons of money. I may lose money on this, but if the tech bubble keeps up, I will more than make up for these losses with RE appreciation.

INTC has not been a winner. YNDX was for a while, but now below my average. GO has been a big loss, but I am glad I averaged down when it was 23. I really love their Point Loma location.

My current biggest winner unrealized is a put on coinbase that’s up 173%. But I had others expire at 0, so really have about broken even there. My best stock right now is WFC, up 144% since 9/23/20. It is such a solid company I wasn’t worried about buying in big. I don’t know how people can put a big part of their net worth into unprofitable tech companies.

I wish I had just did SPY the last two years. My stocks did about 12% v 40% for the SP500.

This is partly because my risk profile was much lower however. I shorted REITs as a hedge against my large RE rental investment, and most of the rest was in value stocks and bonds.

Stock valuations seemed roughly fair to me in 2019, the giant bull market I did not see coming at all.

It shows as 18.94 on fidelity. Fidelity also reports the last day’s loss every single day, so the “day’s gain” feature on Fidelity has been broken nearly the entire war.

It traded much lower than 18.94 in London for a few more days, and then was suspended there too.

Fidelity’s balance and account values seems to switch randomly between valuation of 0 and 18.94.

Apple Stocks app shows it at 1700 roubles which comes to about $20. The Russian stock and currency markets are under government controls so not too meaningful. I’d guess it would be about 15-20 right now if tradable here.

Interestingly, there’s a US fund that is mostly Russian stocks but not suspended, CEE. It dropped from 30 to 7 when the war started and is now 10.

I remain bullish on Eastern Europe and also have a fair amount of EPOL.

Good performance for me lately. My conservative longs go down a little, my shorts plunge. Only TSLA and WE have yet to collapse. LYFT, SQ, MSFT, COIN, DASH, UBER, NET: all disasters. I regret missing CVNA.

Biggest long position now is XOM. I think China demand is coming back heavy when they give up on lockdowns and Russia supply will drop with sanctions and parts and service issues.

Biden also released so much oil from the SPR this year that it is at record lows and they are planning to start restocking now.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Sorry there was a typo. Not MSFT, but MSTR. That has been a real winner for me, and I’ve locked in gains by selling the puts I purchased months ago while remaining short.

TSLA is now worth more than every other auto public company combined. You think that will go up to be 3x everyone else combined?

I believe they are not a leader in self driving. GM, not Tesla, has self driving taxis in SF. And Google does in Phoenix. They have slipped behind VW in Europe and BYD in China in electric car sales.

Tesla is certainly a premium brand people will pay a lot of money for, but their cars seem kind of dated compared to the electric Mustang. I think they remain a niche player selling premium electric cars only.

For SQ, their bitcoin business is collapsing, down 50% YoY. Their merchant service and cashapp are low margin and ultra competitive and money-losing. I covered half my position today, but will reshort any rally.

Just in everyday life, i have done P2P payments with paypal, google pay, and zelle. I have never used venmo, but know many people who do. I have never once heard IRL a word about SQ’s cashapp. They are losers in a market where they have to compete with free products with big network effects.

The only time i ever hear about cashapp online is online begging.

Finally they overpaid for a “pay later” company that is far behind affirm in market share, and affirm is circling the drain.

WE 1.0 was nearly bankrupt, but bailed out and restructured by softbank and then went public by spac and merger . They continue to lose billions. I am cautious only because it is heavily shorted, smallcap, and could squeeze.